Omaha, NE – With the economy being what it is, closing a sale in the first place can be tough. Meeting customer expectations with regard to delivering materials on time is the next challenge. And managing that process without giving away profitability can be difficult. Available with a seamless integration to Agility, DQ Technologies’ Order Delivery Tracking (ODT) is a software suite designed to help businesses who service their customers through delivery become more efficient throughout the order and delivery process. Users of ODT are finding that they are able maximize profitability of their sales by controlling the costs associated with transporting materials to customers.

Leonard Safrit, president of East Hardwoods in Beaufort, N.C. recognized the impact delivery costs have on profits three years ago when he implemented ODT with his Agility system. “DQ’s ODT software has helped us streamline our operations in two significant ways. First, we were able to consolidate three dispatch operations down to one person dispatching for all locations. Second, with the information ODT captures for us, we were able to move to a pay for performance model for our drivers and riders. ODT has made a significant improvement in productivity in our operations.”

When an order is placed in Agility, the information seamlessly flows over into ODT. An order goes through a series of user defined order statuses that are designed using your current workflow. By adding an acknowledged stage to your workflow, companies can reduce the calls between sales and dispatch. This eliminates calls to dispatch with the question, “Did you get that order?” Instead, dispatch gets the order and marks it electronically to acknowledge their receipt. The system is very visual, with colors assigned to the various order statuses and a quick glance makes it easy to see the various stages of the order. For example, it shows if dispatch has the ticket, the order has been picked, the order has been staged, dispatched, delivered, etc.

Another benefit of ODT is the ability to automatically capture cost information at the most granular level. Tools like barcode scanning and GPS Dynamic Geofencing help move an order through the delivery process. As the information is assembled, ODT knows on an order by order and a customer by customer basis the true cost of delivery. Drive time, stop time, helper time, equipment time and assembly time − everything that goes into delivering that load is measured and captured. “The benefit is, ODT is capturing and measuring time and distance and associating those costs at the order level,” says Tony Shepley, president of Shepley Wood Products in Hyannis, Mass. “This gives us true activity based costing information where we can look at the effect of delivery cost on our gross margin.”

ODT also illustrates what each load should cost before it ever leaves a yard, so overages can be spotted and traced back to customers, drivers and even salespeople with a comparison between ODT’s actual tracked costs and the calculated estimated cost. “When you look at this on a customer or salesman basis over time, you start to see trends and patterns, and have the tools to better managing the business. If we make too many deliveries or pickup runs to a particular customer, this really stands out,” adds Shepley.

To learn more, please join us for the Logistics by DQ webinar on July 13, 2010 at 10:30 AM CST. Or, contact the Productivity Solutions team at dmsiproductivitysolutions@dmsi.com or call 402-330-6620 ext. 223.

Once your implementation has started your team will spend time onsite in Omaha studying the details of the Agility Item file and working through your planned processes one on one with your project man…

Once your implementation has started your team will spend time onsite in Omaha studying the details of the Agility Item file and working through your planned processes one on one with your project man…